In modern manufacturing, there exists an ongoing challenge to reduce costs. The field of armour cable production is no exception. A commonplace method for producing armour cable involves passing cable through the rotating carriage of a coiling machine. The rotating carriage carries one or more spools of metal (typically aluminum, galvanized steel or stainless steel) in strip form. As the carriage rotates, strip metal is drawn from the spool and passed through roll-forming dies to produce a cross-section that is amenable to interlocking with itself once coiled. The formed metal strip is then fed to a bending head, which puts a curl into the metal strip so that it assumes a helical form, around the central cable, in interlocking relationship with itself. The aforementioned cost-reduction imperative has, in recent years, fed to significant improvements in production speeds from a given machine; whereas in or about 1995, a typical carriage might rotate at about 800 rpm, in 2011, speeds of about 1400 rpm are not uncommon.